


Voodooized: A Collection

by your_kat



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Yellow Pillow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-20 06:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 14,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2418392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_kat/pseuds/your_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Carmilla ficlets I've posted on tumblr. None of these are related to any of the others. Not unless you look very, very closely. (Season 2 ficlets start at chapter 13.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Voodooized

Bad dreams had become Laura’s new norm. And Carmilla had noticed.

1.

The first night she had been witness to Laura’s fidgetiness and whining, Carmilla had ignored her completely.

She fell asleep a few hours later herself, and her dreams were plagued with primal hunger and the inevitable feeling of pacing — back and forth, like a panther silently padding about in the darkness…

She awoke to a dry mouth and the faint phantom beating of her own heart.

Laura was already sitting at her desk, editing fanfiction and munching on a cookie. When she heard Carmilla shift, she turned and opened her mouth, clearly ready to utter some kind of asinine statement about the hour of the day.

Carmilla cut the petite morsel off by grumbling unintelligible words and rolling over, smashing a pillow down on her head to drown out the insufferable smirk that was to be inevitably directed her way.

She wished she had the yellow one, to drown out unwanted commentary, but what’s an undead fiend to do.

2.

The next time it happened, Carmilla had been brooding. Not that she would ever call it that — but that was what it was. The stars had been particularly clear, even through the three o’clock haze of purple mist that enshrouded Silas without fail every night.

It started as a whimper, an almost indistinguishable whine in the back of Laura’s throat. Carmilla’s eyes closed in a flutter of lashes, and she did her best to pretend she was elsewhere. Anywhere would have done, really. Somewhere warm, somewhere the sun wasn’t afraid to beat down on her body; or somewhere cold, somewhere that would make the desire to curl in on herself more acceptable…

The bat wing charm was sitting on Laura’s desk next to her computer. Carmila knew this, because she knew where the damn thing was, always. It bugged her to no end that Laura was so obstinate about her refusal to wear it, but at least she had stopped hiding it under mattresses.

With a silent sigh and a roll of her eyes, Carmilla pushed away from the armoire she had been leaning against. She tore her eyes away from the purple mist, even as it started to bleed into the beginnings of the blood red fog that was typical of the twilight hours around the university — her favorite.

She scooped up the charm and then stood next to Laura’s bed. The girl was terribly oblivious, even in her sleep. Any human with a normal threshold for terror would never sleep with their hand hanging over the edge of the bed — monsters were real, Carmilla could attest to that.

Carefully, Carmilla dipped the leather bands of the charm down and around Laura’s fingertips. She slid it upward, then tightened it gently around Laura’s wrist. There, that would do.

But as Carmilla began to pull away, the hand she had anointed with the protections of an ancient spell she’d learn years ago from someone she’d long ceased to remember — that very hand, it reached out, and its fingers grasped her own.

A feral growl reverberated in Carmilla’s throat at the contact. She stayed still, so very, very still, waiting for Laura’s grip to loosen and fall away. But her grip  _didn’t_  loosen — in fact, it seemed to tighten almost immeasurably as Carmilla leaned away from the touch. In four hundred years of unlife, this was a situation unfamiliar to her. But she didn’t break contact. For some reason, she just couldn’t.

A few minutes passed. The faint sound of Zetas chanting in the distance bled in through the cracked window. Carmilla sighed as she observed the lines in the ceiling — since it had quickly become her primary objective in life to look anywhere but at Laura. Anywhere but at that angelic face, whose wrinkled brow had so quickly smoothed into lines free from tension or—

Carmilla shook herself. No. Such thoughts were insipid. The Lois Lane wannabe would roll over soon, Carmilla was sure, and she would make her escape then. The warmth in her palm was uncomfortable and itchy and frankly quite disturbing, but she could handle a few more minutes if it meant not having to have a  _conversation_  about the situation.

_Several hours later…_

Just before Laura’s alarm clock was set to go off, her hand infinitesimally loosened its grip on Carmilla’s. As their hands began to slip apart, some small neuronal minority of Carmilla’s brain considered squeezing their atoms back together — then her common sense and self-preservation kicked in, and she let their hands separate.

Laura emitted a soft mewling sound, and Carmilla turned away and made for the far side of the room. When she reached the window, she turned back. She observed in silence as Laura rolled over, snuggling into the yellow pillow that had been at her back all night. In mere seconds, the rise and fall of her shoulders indicated that she had fallen back into something resembling a peaceful sleep.

Carmilla had stopped breathing several long seconds ago. Unblinkingly, she watched her cohabitator sleep. She imagined herself, standing there in the space next to the girl’s bed like some entranced simpleton, yet her facial expression belied not one of the emotions raging beneath the surface.

Minutes more passed. Laura was still. There would be no more bad dreams in what was left of this night.

In the blink of an eye, Carmilla was gone, a five-foot plume of black smoke dissipating into the air in her absence.

3.

A few nights later, Carmilla was reading her favored Kierkegaard text in the darkness of the quiet room. The familiarity of it was comforting, if some of his more commonly known bits of wisdom made her lip curl in disdain —  _“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”_  Existentialism had never been Carmilla’s favorite school of philosophical thought. Nor had the 19th been her favorite century, in hindsight.  _“At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.”_  Pfft, what did he know.

The peacefulness she had allowed herself to experience was abruptly interrupted by the simultaneously grating two-in-the-morning chorale of the glee club and the indicative sounds of impending roommate-nightmares.

At first, Carmilla remained silent — stoically so, she thought. Then her eyes slid across the room to the desk, and the partially obscured bat wing charm sticking out from under a nearly empty tray of cookies. Carmilla furrowed her brow and shifted her gaze to glare at the side of her roommate’s face — where her hand was splayed out on the pillow next to her, wrist obscenely bare.

Grumbling under her breath, though lightly enough not to wake Lauronica, Carmilla was up out of bed, the charm clutched in her hand in a flash.

But as she stood next to the bed, as she watched the evidence of unseeable demons creeping across the other girl’s face, Carmilla found herself frozen in place. She couldn’t help but stare with some sense of trepidation — or was it reverence?

She shook herself.

Foolish, foolish thoughts.

With all the deftness and dexterity she possessed, Carmilla quickly got the charm around Laura’s wrist with as little potential for sleep disturbance as was vampirically possible. She was successful, having not even grazed a millimeter of the girl’s skin in the process. The nightmare-induced whimpering tapered off slowly, and Laura rolled over in her sleep, subconsciously reaching out and clutching the yellow pillow to her chest. Soon, her face was completely relaxed. Peaceful. Carmilla’s lips tilted upward.

A loose strand of Laura’s hair had fallen out of her ponytail, and it was threatening to tickle the side of her nose. Carmilla reached out, making a move as if she were about to brush the potentially offending lock away from Laura’s face… But she didn’t. Her hand hovered in the air between them, uncertain and devoid of daring. Then she let it fall limply back to her side.

“Coward,” she whispered under her breath. And she nearly jumped at the sound of her own voice, unexpected as it had been. “ _Fool_ ,” she hissed, correcting herself before turning on her toes and plopping down as quietly as possible onto her own bed.

When she was again situated in the dark, with her book open in her left hand and her right arm propping her up, she openly stared across the room. The content look on the girl’s face was mesmerizing. Carmilla had been trying to understand it; she found herself failing.

She got no more reading done that night.

4.

The next time the nightmares made a play for Laura’s dreamscape, Carmilla instantly looked guiltily down at the yellow pillow under her own arm. She had stolen it earlier that day and had been cuddling it every time Laura was out of the room — or just every time Laura had a foray into obliviousness, which was quite often.

Carmilla bit at her lip. One of her incisors pressed into her skin roughly, but she hardly noticed her own actions. Pain was an old friend anyway, and she silently welcomed the slight, distracting sting.

In a rare moment of decisiveness, Carmilla grabbed the yellow pillow and made the short journey to Laura’s side of the room.

The bat charm was next to Laura’s lamp. Carmilla ignored it.

And as she stood above the girl, her sudden resolution abruptly faded. She stared at the bare skin of the niblet’s arm, gazed hungrily at the place where her shoulder turned into her neck…

She blinked once — hard and long — and then carefully lifted Laura’s arm, tucking the pillow into place before lowering her arm back down. It was over in the blink of an eye, though it felt like an endless, arduous process to Carmilla. If she’d had need of air in her lungs, she would have been gasping at the extended breathlessness that came over her, then, as she observed the other girl’s changing demeanor.

It was like a soothing ripple descending across her form, the calming effect that washed over Laura, and Carmilla was only momentarily surprised that the bat wing was apparently not a relevant factor in the equation. The girl clung tightly in her sleep to the yellow pillow. And Carmilla continued to watch as her brow became as smooth as ever, as she took a deep breath that she released as if all of the demons were leaving her body at once.

If Carmilla hadn’t figured it out before, she knew then: she wanted to protect the girl.

She just wasn’t sure  _wanting_  would be sufficient.

5.

Over her lifetime, Carmilla had dreamt hundreds upon hundreds of dreams. And her memory was long, when it came to the things that played out in her mind’s eye — she could recall each and every one of them. But over the past several weeks, ever since she had moved in with the private-eye-in-training, the dreams had become all-consuming. Most nights, she avoided them entirely if she could, and she did most of her sleeping, when her body eventually required it, during the daylight hours. There was something about the sun; it seemed to keep the demons responsible for the terrors of the night at bay.

Sometimes. Not always.

_The ball was glamorous, and the taste of champagne on Carmilla’s tongue was sweet and bubbly. But her name wasn’t Carmilla, then. No, not yet. Carmilla had come later. Another life, another doom; another death, another tomb. Strings were strummed and drums were beat, and giddy laughter and chatter rang through the hall._

_The glass was plucked from her fingers, and Carmilla was swept up in a waltz. Masks hid faces. Time stood still, yet rushed by in a magnificent phantasmagoria — of color, of sound, of everything and nothing all at once. An oppressively large yet strikingly lithe body pressed hers into the motions of the dance, carried it along to the steady one-two-three of the rhythm. Her head spun. Cold air grazed her cheek. A voice spoke._

_“I know what you are, Carmilla Karnstein.”_

_Carmilla knew she was in a dream, then. She hadn’t known, not even a moment before, not for certain. But once she knew, she_ knew _, and there would be no escaping._

_In a rush of pain that should have been exquisite but was only excruciating, the flesh of her neck was torn into — like she was a rag doll in the hands of a brute child, a kitten in the jaws of a rabid dog, a young, beautiful woman in the clutches of a monster…_

_She screamed, and the party around her froze. She was thrown back in the arms of her attacker, a macabre pose of agony feigning ecstasy. Her head was back, her chest was heaving, her moans were rending the air. The whites of her eyes were all that were visible for a moment, then she blinked, and things came back into focus._

_The attacker was gone. She righted herself. The onlookers — oblivious, with their dopey grins and their futile exercise in aristocracy — dissipated into nothingness._

_A painting appeared before her, hanging in the void of space. Carmilla hurried forward, and her half-dozen steps took an eternity and no time at all. The work of art was immediately before her face, and she could only clutch at the gushing wound of her neck, could only feel the blood seeping from between her fingers as she stared._

_“It’s you,” a voice whispered. And this voice was such a familiar voice that Carmilla could have cried out in abject humiliation at the way her own vocal cords refused to adequately respond. “She looks just like you.” Reaching out, Carmilla smeared her hands — her blood — over the painting of the young woman who_ was _her, who_ had been  _her, who would be her_ forever _. “Couldn’t be, though, right? Couldn’t be…”_

_The voice faded away. And with it, her fragile grasp on that particular reality._

_Carmilla looked around her. The walls of the castle she’d been in were completely gone. A forest surrounded her now. She took a step forward. Pine needles crunched beneath her feet. Darkness pressed against her peripheral vision, and there was complete and utter blackness everywhere but directly in front of her. There was a low rumbling sound to her left, yet when she shifted to look in that direction, it was suddenly to her right. It was a vibrating sensation that seemed to shake Carmilla to her very core._

_And then there was movement. It was a sinuous, crawling form of black on black. Carmilla could not make out any definitive shape. But then eyes as red as death and as mean as hellfire shone out of the night and it was all she could do not to succumb completely._

_Please, she tried to call out, but she was incapable of producing sound._

_Please, she screamed, help me!_

_Please, don’t leave me here alone!_

_Please…_

_And her chest heaved as the devil pounced, and Carmilla_ knew  _she was dreaming, but she_ couldn’t escape _, and maybe this —_ this!  _— was the end of her, after all this time._

_But then…_

_The sun came out. It shone brightly, suddenly, like a supernova surging into existence. A visceral scream of agony and total anguish rent the night air, and the remaining vestiges of darkness shattered into a million pieces of nothingness. The feral beast was vanquished._

_Carmilla sobbed — but only once. And then she lowered herself slowly, gently to the ground. The palms of her hands touched the warm earth, and she reveled in the feeling of life that flowed from her fingertips — and not from the wound at her neck, now vanished, that had been so very mortal (so very comforting, in that fashion). Her breath came in quick, shallow pants, until it came in deep, even breaths. She pressed her face downward, tasted dew on her tongue, and knew that this was only the beginning._

_The sun shone brightly — a fierce guardian that Carmilla had missed for longer than she could recall._

_With a deep inhalation, she let her eyes shut. Her body curled in on itself, and in her dream, Carmilla slept…_

Carmilla woke.

Always, when her mind surfaced from sleep, there was a disconcerting moment wherein she had to make sense of reality. And this sudden reality, it was almost too much.

Carmilla’s arms were wrapped around the yellow pillow.

No, surely that couldn’t be right. She had made sure it had been securely underneath  _Laura’s_ head before she gave in to the desire to sleep—

She rubbed her thumb over the seams, then shut her eyes tightly as she pressed her nose into the fabric and inhaled deeply. Cookies, grape soda, lavender shampoo.  _Home_ , her heart purred.

The sound of a page turning knocked Carmilla abruptly out of her thoughts. Her eyes opened in a flash.

The little one was there, sitting on her bed, a textbook open in her lap. It was a change, Carmilla thought, from the perch she normally took up in front of her computer. But as her eyes focused, Carmilla realized that the girl was looking directly at her now.

“Bad dreams?”

The voice was small, but it fit perfectly between them.

Carmilla hummed in response, deep and low in her throat.

“It’s the pillow,” Laura offered, unnecessarily. Carmilla involuntarily clenched it tighter in her arms. “I think it keeps the bad dreams away.”

Silence fell between them. Carmilla didn’t have anything to say — nothing savvy, nothing philosophical, not even anything spiteful or, conversely, reassuring. Because the bad dreams wouldn’t be kept at bay, not forever. Not even by this magic that she was still struggling to understand.

But, until she had other answers… Carmilla thought it might be worth it, to share the pillow.

And the soft smile on Laura’s lips told Carmilla that that would be just fine.


	2. Haunted

It wasn’t that Carmilla was trying to be a nuisance, honestly, and it wasn’t because she had no sense of boundaries – which was actually perfectly accurate.

It was because Laura’s yellow pillow, for whatever reason, kept away the nightmares.

Dried bat wings had never quite done it, not for Carmilla. She had tried stronger charms before, and they would work for a time. But darkness can pervade darkness much more easily than light, and she knew that a shroud of darkness would forever surround her – that was her curse. She welcomed it as only the cursed immortal ever can.

But the pillow…

It was just a few nights into their forced cohabitation when Carmilla discovered its potent abilities. And quite by accident, at that.

—

Laura woke up with a jolt, unaware that Carmilla was lying quietly in her bed, though very much also awake. She sat straight up, blinked several times into the darkness before glancing over toward Carmilla’s still form. Then Carmilla watched through the slits of her barely open eyes as Laura looked down at the floor between them; she astutely observed as the girl gulped around a lump in her throat in the darkness, her eyes drawing a line from the underside of Carmilla’s bed across the floor and to her own…

And Carmilla found herself utterly transfixed as courage dawned like a ray of sunshine across Laura’s face, and the girl resolutely swung her legs out of bed and planted her feet firmly on the floor. With impressive resolve, she then quietly left the room, perhaps to go and find the obnoxious tall one.

Carmilla didn’t care to ponder.

The door was left open, just a crack, and light shone into the space between their beds. Not much scared Carmilla, but she  _was_ scared, then; mostly by the unexpected loneliness that chilled her to the marrow, but also by the skittering, scratching noise she heard beneath her bed once Laura’s footsteps had faded down the hallway.

(Even thinking back on that moment, Carmilla’s breath would speed up and her heart would pulse with phantom beats of terror. The things that haunt the haunted are best left only to the deepest recesses of the imagination. When they make manifest their wicked, wicked ways, it is wise to be afraid. Being afraid means that your wits are sharp. If your wits are sharp, your chances of surviving are less stilted against you.)

Words were muttered in rapid succession from between her red lips, words whose origins went far, far beyond Carmilla, and she pressed her eyes shut ever so tightly. The sounds from beneath her bed began to resonate in the small space of their room, louder and louder and  _louder,_  until –

Silence, like thunder.  And a permeating odor Carmilla knew only she could smell – a smell of death, of promise, of a painful, inevitable future. But beneath the smell of doom incarnate, there was another aroma, one that slowly but assuredly became more and more dominant until, eventually, it was all Carmilla could sense.

It was the smell of cookies. Cookies and grape soda and lavender shampoo.

Carmilla turned her head sharply to her right and gave Laura’s bed a scathing glance. The moment of danger was gone. She swept out of her bed and took the two steps across the room necessary to reach the place where the smell was originating: Laura’s sunshine-yellow pillow.

“Hmm,” Carmilla purred. “I wonder…”

Her fingertips touched the fabric of the pillow only for a fraction of a second before she felt something wash across her body from head to toe – something that, if she was capable of naivety, she might call  _peace_.

She grabbed the pillow, clutching it to her chest and slinking back into her bed like the creature of the night she was – and she  _did_ purr, then, as she smiled at the smell of cookies and warmth.

—

There were no more bad dreams for her, when she slept with the pillow. But the insufferable small one would constantly take it back, and Carmilla certainly couldn’t  _ask_  for it. Night in and night out, Carmilla would lay awake until she managed to steal the oddly charmed object back. And night in and night out, Laura wouldn’t understand: she would snatch it away like it was  _just_  a _pillow_ , though Carmilla certainly couldn’t fault the girl for her ignorance.

It wasn’t until one afternoon that Carmilla found herself particularly disturbed by a shocking turn of events.

She got home after a long day of classes taught by insipid professors and a search for otherworldly extracurricular answers. She made a beeline for Laura’s bed, curling into the warm, abandoned lump of blankets and pressing her face into the pillow she had come to rely on. And as quickly as her eyes had closed in contentment, they snapped open in confusion: for there were new smells amongst the sugar and the flowery scent of Laura’s hair products. It was a hint of  _grass_  and  _books_ , and Carmilla couldn’t stop herself from hissing and curling her lip slightly at the insinuation these new smells  _dared_  to make. But then… then she recognized a strangely soothing balance, what with the way the lavender and grass mixed, and how the smell of books and of cookies lent just the right synergy to each other…

The tall one  _was_  obnoxious, but she  _did_  do her best to keep Laura safe… And maybe Carmilla could live with that, if she managed to live much longer, anyway. Keeping Laura alive, that was a good start. Synergy could exist in a lot of different forms, she supposed.

The tugs of war would have to continue;  _all of them_ , it seemed.

And Carmilla found that she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind one bit.


	3. Only Just

Carmilla, sitting at a Parisian cafe in 1952. Wide-brim hat shielding her eyes from the early morning sun. Sunglasses on her nose. Nietzschean text in front of her.

She ignores the basket of freshly baked bread, as well as the carafe of red wine that sits in the middle of the table. Seven decades of unimaginable hunger had left a pit in her stomach that no mortal sustenance could fill, and it had taken many agonizing, restless months to finally gain control over the monster within her once she had resurfaced.

(Many battlefields had seen their dying victims silenced by her bite in those early days.)

Was she glad to be free from her hellish captivity? Of course.

Was she happy to be alive? Debatable.

She often woke from dissatisfying sleep, gasping for air in the wake of the phantom sensation of blood, filling up her useless lungs. Again.

And she saw things, now. Nightmarish entities given form. Red eyes in the dark of night. Ghosts…

Her breath catches. There, in the corner of her eye. It looked like— but no, it couldn’t be.

A heart that hasn’t beat in long centuries aches in a still chest.

She had loved the girl, and that love had been her doom.

It’s only three days later that she looks up from the history book she’s moved on to only to see the sharply chiseled, immovable face of Mother.

Somehow, the world keeps spinning. But only just.


	4. Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful

“This is  _painfully_  inconvenient.”

“Seriously? You’ve just been laying in bed – on  _my_ pillow, at that – reading and being all broody, as per usual. As if  _you_  could be inconvenienced.”

Carmilla rolled her eyes behind sunglasses, turned the page, muttered, “Inconvenience is something I am  _intimately_  familiar with,” and tilted her head in a way that exuded boredom.

Laura spun around in her desk chair, her mouth scrunching shut.

This whole Alchemy Department thing was really grinding her gears.

Apparently, it had all started out innocently enough. Alchemical experiment commencement, radical misinterpretation of science, and somewhat extraordinary explosion – not in and of itself unusual, as the east wing of the research building wherein the alchemists did their work typically required rebuilding once every six weeks or so – the result of which had been the dissipation of a fine, slightly chalky, Jolly Rancher green apple-flavored mist all over the campus of Silas U.

The mist, it turned out, was the aerosolized remnant of the department’s latest experiment: truth serum.

Lockdown had begun three hours before. And things in the dorm room of Laura Hollis and Carmilla Karnstein were  _far_ from warm.

“I want you to clean up after yourself more.”

“Well,  _I_  want  _you_  to stop inviting the ginger crew into the sacred space of my habitation.”

And so on.

And so forth.

_Six hours later…_

“I’m going to scream.”

“Please, refrain.”

Laura  _harrumphed_  in the space following Carmilla’s deadpan.

“Tell me something.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tell me something, about your life.”

“I like black.”

“Don’t act smart with me, Carmilla.”

“…I don’t mind it terribly when you say my name.”

“Wah-what?”

Carmilla sighed. Laura gaped.

“Truth serum?” Laura questioned.

“I guess,” Carmilla shrugged.

Laura bit her lip, pondering.

“What was the worst thing about the 1700s?”

“Men.”

A chuckle, Laura’s.

“What about the 1900s?”

Carmilla glanced at Laura over the top of her glasses. Memories, then: of the ground shaking, splitting, rending in two. Smoke and blood and death.

When she spoke, her voice was flat, nearly lost in the strange cloud of silence that had surrounded their room like a fog – perhaps a secondary manifestation of the vaporized serum.

“Men,” she answered.

And they were silent, for a little while.

_Another three hours later…_

“But I mean, what was the best concert you ever experienced? There  _has_  to be one that sticks out.”

“Just because we’ve been drugged with truth serum doesn’t mean that I can instantly recall every fact of my long life at the drop of a hat.”

“Okay, okay,” Laura conceded. “Here’s an easier one, one that I  _know_  you can’t get away from so easily: have you ever been in love?”

Carmilla nearly growled.

 “You know this story already.”

 “All right, so that’s a  _yes_ …”

“Yes,” Carmilla grumbled, “that’s a yes.”

“Are you over her?”

Laura’s voice was quiet. Yet Carmilla still found it impossible to ignore, even as her mind filled with the face she had never quite managed to forget.

“…Yes.”

The word came slowly, leaving her lips on a long drawl. Laura looked skeptical, but that wasn’t the only emotion playing across her face…

She turned away, back towards her computer, and Carmilla thought she had dodged the stake.

But then Laura turned back again, her face a mask.

“Could you love again?”

 And Carmilla stared straight into Laura’s eyes.

And Carmilla lied.


	5. Jägerbominatrix

They call you the jägerbominatrix, and so you are determined to be worthy of the name.

The music is pounding, the room is spinning, your roommate is giggling with that cute scrunched up face she tends to make. Bodies press against you, and it's everything you can do to escape the throng, the thriving masses.

The hallway between the living room and the stairway is mostly devoid of life, though you do see a set of junior Zetas making out and a pair of red, glowing eyes beneath the stairwell...

With a heavy exhale, you stop, stumble, reach out and grasp the banister as you blink, hard, and refocus your eyesight.

And when you do, you see  _her_  -- flawless skin, and hair; all teeth, and lips. And you stop, again, even though you're pretty sure you already went through those motions.

"Hey, cutie," she purrs.

Your heart purrs back. Then you shake yourself. Laura, you've got to get back to Laura, since you made her come here.  _Not cool to ditch the roommate, Betty_ , you think.  _Not cool._

"Hey," you reply, all smiles and sudden nausea.

"Ya know, I think you probably shouldn't be here."

"What?" you ask, turning back to the girl you've seen a dozen times but have never quite gotten a firm grasp on.

"I think you should go."

"Go? Go where?"

"Anywhere."

"Thanks for the intentional vagueness," you grumble, pleased with yourself and your adequate enunciation.

"Betty," she barks -- a clear, crisp noise that stops you in the tracks you were beginning to tread back towards the party. "Go  _home_."

"What," you grumble again, "back to my room to sleep it off? I don't think so,  _cutie._ "

"If you know what's good for you--" she started, her tone ramping up into a steady rev that you're afraid to let finish.

"I know," you try, "I know... _myself_. I can  _handle this_. Besides, I have  _Laura_ ," you say, muttering the rest to yourself as you head back towards the party: "If she doesn't have Danny by now, at least..."

Before you turn the corner and lose yourself in the crowd, you turn back one last time.

And you see the girl -- Will told you her name is  _Carmilla_  -- and she looks so fucking disappointed, that you almost lose your breath.

But then the crowd catches you. Just like it always does.

And the next time you wake up, all you can see is her face behind your clenched tight eyelids, and all you can do is wish you had listened.


	6. Enchanted Evermore

 

> _“Maybe she can’t get to you.”_

The little niblet just didn’t comprehend the weight of those words. How could she possibly?

For decades, I choked. I gagged on blood, my useless lungs filled with clots and I retched at the taste of old, copper pipes.

But sometimes, I would fall asleep. And you’d think that would be a sweet release, that moment when my body’s reflexes would tire enough, that my brain would exhaust itself so completely that I would drop into some sick mockery of peace.

I’ll tell you this – it was the opposite of whatever heaven must be, when my body would still and my mind would somehow take me elsewhere.

And I lied to Laura. I lied, because I  _do_  see her, Ell – I see her every single time.

She was always so small, so petite and fragile, just the way her world had built her – the world I had dreamt of stealing her away from, in the dead of night.

> _“Maybe she can’t get to you.”_

Her outline, a bright spot of white in the darkness. And there is blood, there is  _always_  blood.

I dream of her, I do. Some sick consolation prize of Mother’s making? Who knows. But I never see her face. She never turns to me, no matter how I scream.

And,  _oh_ , have I  _ever_ screamed for her.

In those decades beneath the earth, I screamed my misery at her back. I wrote my regret in words that I threw at her spine. I cried out the sincerest apologies that will never be written down or heard by another being on earth, and I pressed them gently against her shoulder blades.

And when I ran out of misery and regret, anguish and despair… I hurtled burning words of hatred and contempt at her instead.

I would have given anything, for a glimpse of that face. Would have  _done_  anything for a chance to see the visage of my undoing once more…

> _“Maybe she can’t get to you.”_

Sarah Jane and Natalie, Betty and Elsie, and the others who came before them – they told me things, had conversations with me that they’ll never remember. The Alchemy Department makes potent cocktails, you see. And I always know when to make my move…

“Tell me about your dreams,” I’d say. Then, of course, I’d have to sidestep their daydreams, their hopes and ambitions – “ _No_ , tell me about  _the dreams_.” And that would get them going.

But it was always the same, for them, then. Just the same as Laura’s dreams, now – though they were never so helpful, what with Laura’s – with  _Ell’s_  – special warnings of death and doom…

The point. I had a point, I think.

Yes.

The girl,  _my_  girl – she always turns to them, always shows her face. They drown in blood, sure, but  _god_ , they get to see her face…

But not me. Never me.

> “ _Maybe she can’t get to you._ ”

But I know the truth, I’ve known it for a long time.

Maybe she can’t get to me?

No.

_No._

It’s  _me_  who can’t get to  _her_.

And when I wake – now, as I always have – I wake to the taste of copper, and I choke on my regret.


	7. Out of my Head

_A/N: This was written because of the song[Echo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxpLxb5jHO0) by Jason Walker (thanks [goneawayawhile](http://tmblr.co/mqiOYtKnQBhDoAjN8OHSgaQ)), and because I will _ forever  _be obsessed with Carmilla’s life immediately post-coffin._

When Carmilla finally surfaced — to blood and death and the raging scream of falling missiles — her mind was a jumbled puzzle of chaos and madness and terror.

She walked her bare and soon bloodied feet across a battlefield — across what had once been a peaceful place, the last sight of cool, green earth that Carmilla had seen in seven decades. And her mind dashed this way and that, unable to comprehend the horrors she was seeing, nor the horrors she had lived for so long, buried in the ground.

Clotted blood clung to her forearms, dripped like sludge down her face. She blinked to clear her eyes, she walked among the fallen, and she feasted, because that was what the demon inside of her begged her to do. And no one batted an eyelash at the girl who roamed for hours, for days, amongst the dead and the dying. Because, to them, she was an angel. Of death, undoubtedly. But an angel nonetheless.

The rain came. It wiped away some of the blood, some of the stench, but none of the madness.

When Carmilla came upon civilization again, after days of wandering with no purpose and with no understanding of what the world had become, she was utterly savage. Her mind, unhinged. Her screams rent the night, and the sight of her crazed eyes sent shutters slamming shut and made children and grown men alike cower beneath their bedcovers.

It took five full-grown men to take her down and deliver her to the sanitarium sixty miles away.

She fought, she screamed; she raged and bit and would have burned them all to ashes with her gaze if she had possessed such power. And for weeks, she would wake from restless, impossible sleep, gagging at blood that wasn’t there. It wasn’t there, not anymore. Maybe Carmilla wasn’t there, either.

Bloodied pages of notebooks lined the archives from that time in the institution’s history, written by psychiatrists whose hands shook as they wiped blood from their faces and prayed and documented their findings, because that was what they had been trained to do.

The notes made one thing clear: whatever had driven her mad, they simply couldn’t say. But she rambled on a near-constant basis, obsessed with her mother, with someone named ‘L’, and with blood and thunder, darkness and death… Within three weeks of her arrival, she had already killed two guards and one nurse. Nothing could satiate her, nothing could bend the will of her mind. Until—

Down the hall from Carmilla’s room came the soft lilt of music, pulsing up and down from the horn of a phonograph in another room. Her body — which had shaken uncontrollably since her arrival at the sanitarium — slowly began to settle, until she was finally still. She got up and walked toward the sound, and no one stopped her, because none remained who were unafraid of her wrath and her altered mind. And when she reached the machine, she pressed her fingers to the solid wood of the device from which the notes were emanating, notes that seemed somehow distantly familiar. Notes from history, transposed upon a new world.

An entry from one of the final notebooks detailing Carmilla’s stay reads as follows, from that day: _Her visage became suddenly quite painful in its angelic nature, and tears would not have looked out of place on those ice cold, pale cheeks. Alas, no tears did dare leave those dead eyes, though there came a spark of life to them then for the first time, a spark of humanity, perhaps…_

Two weeks later, Carmilla left the asylum of her own volition, with no possessions to her name, but with a cold but warming heart threatening to beat in her chest.


	8. Slow Disaster

_A/N: This is my angsty premonition for post-season 1, much thanks for feels go to[xactodreams](http://tmblr.co/mq7T2QkYjPNsLuRrtor6Obw), [flyingflesheater](http://tmblr.co/mvSd-jpYfZZLZ-X7kwO6sSA), [goneawayawhile](http://tmblr.co/mqiOYtKnQBhDoAjN8OHSgaQ), and, as always, to [blue2period](http://tmblr.co/mv70mEol9AnxckVxfu-OKUA) for putting up with my fangirl breakdowns._

/ / / / /

Laura was lost. In the most literal sense, truly. They had eventually recovered LaFontaine and another couple of frosh girls who had been taken, almost completely intact, though at great personal risk to themselves. And that risk had been realized by Laura’s disappearance. Not even a cookie crumb trail was left behind in her wake. Just a postcard, like the ones they had become all too familiar with over the past two semesters of battling the forces of darkness.

The message, however expected it had been, was devastating. When Carmilla had read it in the center of the room she had shared with Laura, Danny looking on over her shoulder, she had felt the world stop spinning.

> _We told you this would happen._

That was it. That was the extent of the message. And it was exquisitely torturous. Both Carmilla and Danny were wrecked. They spent that first night together, but apart — Carmilla curled up like a cat in her bed, wrapped around Laura’s yellow pillow as if it were an anchor (and maybe it was), and Danny, sprawled out on Laura’s sheets as if she could soak up the last remnants of the girl her heart had dared to love.

The school year ended. Silas University matriculates dispersed to wherever it is Silas University matriculates go during the summertime, off to do whatever it is Silas University matriculates  _do_  when they’re not at Silas University. Carmilla packed a duffel with a few shirts, a couple pairs of pants, and some bags of blood, threw on her leather jacket and glasses, swept through the library to make off with some reading material, and left, fully intent on never coming back to Silas again. And while Danny, with only one year left of school, would have loved to walk away from Silas forever, she couldn’t in good conscience do so; instead, she visited her aunt and uncle who lived a ways outside Wexford, and she tried forgetting about her troubles, if only for a couple of months.

But reality has its ways of slapping you in the face.

/ / / / /

Midway through summer, Carmilla was hiking in Peru — her legs hadn’t let her stop moving, not even for a night — when she found a letter addressed to her, sticking out of a tree, held in place with a knife, right in her path. She sighed. “Every time,” she grumbled to herself, yanking out the knife — which immediately disintegrated into a million, billion particles of dust — and clutched the letter in her fingers. Even as she read the letter, she hadn’t realized that she had already made the decision to go back. Really, it was too late for her — Silas belonged to the memory of Laura, and Carmilla belonged to that memory. Of course she would be going back. But other decisions still remained.

> _Dear Silas U student,_
> 
> _With the fall semester fast approaching, we require your housing preferences. Please see the attached form: fill it out, close your eyes, crumple it up into a ball, and toss it over your left shoulder to deliver the completed form to us._
> 
> _Wishing you well, wherever you are._
> 
> ~~_You can’t stay away forever._ ~~
> 
> _-Silas U Student Housing Services_

Carmilla’s lip curled at the text that had been marked through, wondering if that was a special Carmilla Edition from the dean or a legitimate addition that all students received. Whatever. It didn’t particularly matter.

She flipped the piece of paper over to reveal the form she was supposed to fill out. There was a list of residence halls with check boxes, if the applicant had a preference, and a line at the bottom that read  **Roommate Placement Preference**.

Without even thinking, Carmilla pulled a pencil out of the side of her pack. Her fingers ached to write Laura’s name — maybe if she willed it so, if she wished and pleaded with the universe hard enough, then the girl would be there on day one, a miracle of grape soda and chocolate chips and lavender shampoo.

Carmilla thanked whatever higher powers that be for her inability to cry, and she wrote a name — the first name that came to her mind, but also the only name that made any sense.

When she crumpled it up and tossed it over her left shoulder, she immediately turned around to look, but it was already gone. Her shoulders rose and fell with a heavy sigh, then she turned and headed back down the path she had been climbing.

It was a long way back to Styria, and she supposed she had some sort of weird, cosmic obligation to the place.

She was just the tiniest bit afraid of what kind of obligation the  _place_ had to  _her_.

/ / / / /

Danny, thousands of miles away from the mountains of Peru, sat and stared contemplatively at the message she had received — tucked beneath her pillow — that morning when she’d awoken.

She had been staring for quite some time. It seemed that was all she had been capable of doing all summer.

She stared at sheep, she stared at moors, she stared at her rambunctious little cousins as they raised all manner of hell. She stared when the sun came out, when it went away; when it rained, when it sleeted, when the winds blew or when they didn’t.

And now, she stared at the line onto which she had the option of jotting down her roommate preference.

Danny had an answer, of course.

Laura, Laura,  _Laura_.

Simple enough, right?

Wrong.

She had gone through two pencils and three ballpoint pens in an attempt to write the missing girl’s name. But it was like the paper  _knew_  — for each time she finished writing the name, it would simply disappear.

It had been  _hours_ , and now all Danny could do was  _stare._

The light was fading, pulling back across the room she had spent a good deal of the last six weeks existing in, and darkness was creeping forward in its wake. By the time it was completely dark, Danny had made up her mind.

She didn’t need light to write these letters — she didn’t need sight to see that this was the only plausible choice remaining to her. What she did need, she realized, was someone to help her feel less alone.

When she tossed the crumpled form over her shoulder, she didn’t hear it hit the floor.

“Whatever,” she sighed, laying down on the bed and performing her nightly ritual of tears: the bone-shaking, heart-wrenching kind.

/ / / / /

Neither was surprised to see the other on move-in day. And they didn’t say a word — not even when Danny extracted the yellow pillow from her things and tossed it onto Carmilla’s bed, nor when Carmilla placed a tray of cookies on the empty desk, cookies that neither of them would ever have the stomach to eat.

They didn’t talk for three days. Three days of trying not to bump into each other in the middle of their new dorm room. Three nights of mutual, devastating loneliness from six feet apart.

Every night, the same: Danny cries, Carmilla lays scarily still and silent; lacrimal glands dry up, both roommates toss and turn relentlessly, unable to find sleep; around three in the morning, Carmilla huffs, grabs her leather jacket, and storms out of the room (gently closing the door behind her); Carmilla does whatever vampires do at three in the morning, and Danny curls into herself, her grip digging into the edge of her mattress like its the only lifeline she’s been afforded in this place called hell that dares to masquerade as a university.

But the fourth night is when everything changes.

Danny hadn’t let herself cry yet. Really, she’d too busy steeling her resolve. But enough was enough.

She stood, padded her way over to the bloodsucking fiend’s bed, and she joined Carmilla beneath the cool covers — somehow devoid of all body heat, though, Danny supposed, as she melded herself to the bed’s other occupant, that maybe Carmilla didn’t emanate heat like a regular person. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?

She was distracting herself.

Carmilla’s back was to Danny’s front. Danny realized that this was okay — no need for eye contact. Not now, at least. And as Danny wrapped her arm around her roommate’s middle — as she pressed her face into that dark, wild hair — she finally allowed herself to cry. And something about these tears, as they were shed from her ducts, made Danny feel like they would be the last of their kind.

Well, maybe not the last. The last wouldn’t come for a very, very long time, as it turned out. But maybe they would stop hurting so much, eventually.

Yeah, that sounds promising.

Carmilla didn’t move at all when the tallest ginger she knows filled the empty space at her back. And Carmilla didn’t move when she felt that strong arm wrap around her. She didn’t even move when warm breath caressed her neck and tears dampened her hair. It was a few moments later, that she finally  _did_  move — her hand now resting on top of the arm that’s clutching her tightly, her fingers pressing gently into warm, trembling flesh, and she’s holding on with the tips of her fingers while Danny is holding on with the entirety of her body.

They still weren’t talking. But that was okay.

The days and nights continued much in the same vein. Sometimes they conversed, sometimes they didn’t. And when the lavender shampoo that they shared ran out a few weeks later, neither of them commented on the new bottle that appeared the same day.

Despite the refilled hair products, the yellow pillow they shared beneath their heads every night smelled less and less like Laura every morning. They held each other tighter, then. And it wasn’t okay, they knew that — but it was something.


	9. Ben is Glory

_ A/N: If I were to write the finale... _

The big bad was defeated. The balance between good and evil was restored. Girls were saved, the Dean was vanquished, former roommate statuses were reinstated.

Etc. etc.

Natalie was without her best friend, Sarah Jane, but she  _was_  alive. LaFonatine was a bit battered and bruised, but would be on the mend soon with Perry’s attention and unwavering adoration. And Betty — Betty was back. Weak, a bit malnourished, a little worse for wear, but ultimately in one piece.

Carmilla had excused herself the second they had made their way out of the cave in which the girls had been kept, the faint early morning sunshine causing her to squint and glare at the sky. She had sustained injuries, much like they all had, and no one bothered questioning her gruffly muttered, “A girl needs sustenance,” before she had made a quick exit from the scene.

Not half an hour later, Laura opened the door to her room and entered, Betty close on her heels. They hadn’t said much. Not that there wasn’t plenty to say — it was just that the words weren’t quite ready to be said.

They stood facing each other in the middle of the floor, and Laura’s mind raced with the months-long quest she had been on to find her missing roommate. To say she was feeling satisfied to have been able to rescue Betty from the clutches of darkness would be the understatement of the century.

Laura’s eyes welled with tears she had somehow not yet shed as she surged forward, wrapping her arms around Betty’s neck.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” she breathed.

A soft, relieved exhalation caressed the side of her face. “Glad to be back,” Betty agreed.

Laura pulled away, looking a bit shy in the face of the emotions that were getting away from her. She gestured with her thumbs in the direction of their bathroom and spun on her heels before disappearing out of sight.

Betty’s shoulders sagged a bit, her frame relaxing from some unseen tension. She looked around the room, possibly taking in the fixtures that were so very  _Carmilla_  in nature.

Slowly, her gaze made it’s way to Laura’s computer and the camera that was still set up, recording every moment.

She walked towards the desk, leaned forward — and it was then that the red jewel of the necklace slipped out of her shirt, dangling malevolently in the air.

In a second that might have lasted an eternity, Betty’s face twisted into a leering smile, a devastating mockery of the girl’s bubbly persona.

Her hand extended forward, reaching for the camera. She clicked a button—

And the feed went black.


	10. Third Time's the Charm

> _ A/N: For the love of ALL THAT IS HOLY,  [please read Ami's story first](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2639252) . This is essentially fanfiction of fanfiction. Her story was born out of painful headcanons that she was texting me the other day, and this glorious story was the result.  **Please read it before you read this.** _

“Third time’s the charm,” she says, and if your heart had never beat in the last three hundred some odd years, it beat  _then_  — with her sticky blood coating your hands and her smile fading fast from those lips you had grown to cherish.

“You’re a  _fool_ ,” you growl, tear ducts exuding a physical  _ache_  that your mind couldn’t possibly qualify. And the painful truth is this: you aren’t sure if you’re talking to  _her_ , or to  _yourself._

“I haven’t seen Paris,” she breathes.

“It’s not that great,” you respond, a fresh wave of oozing, red life coating your hands.

“I wanted to climb Machu Picchu,” she gasps.

“It’s really more trouble than it’s worth,” you explain, “though the cuisine  _is_  remarkable.”

“I won’t get to say goodbye—” she chokes, “—to my dad.”

And now, you hesitate, because what can be said?

“I can tell him,” you somehow decide, “I can tell him goodbye for you.”

“Tell him it doesn’t hurt, dying.”

“What?” you gasp, amazed that her body has apparently delivered this miracle — this miracle of peace. “It doesn’t hurt?”

She smiles, then, somehow, and your dead heart crumbles a fraction more.

“No, yeah, it hurts. It’s  _nearly_ the most I’ve ever felt—” she takes a series of deep, steadying breaths, “—in my entire life.”

You shake your head. Your shake your head, and you clench your eyelids tightly closed, and you feel tears that aren’t supposed to be capable of forming  _form_  in the corners of your eyes. And they slide gingerly down your cheeks, as if they’re testament enough to the fact that your world is crashing and burning at the feet of this child your heart dared to love.

“ _Wha—_ ” you choke, clearing your throat to try again, “—when did you…feel more than  _this?_ ” And by  _this_ , you mean the gore within your embrace, the stench of death, the mottled color that is already blossoming across her innocent cheeks.

And she looks at you, then, with eyes that are suddenly clear. “Oh,  _Carmilla_ ,” her words come, on a breath of almost laughter, “you really don’t need me to say.”

And,  _no,_  you  _didn’t_  need her to say. Because you can picture first looks and hear first conversations — you can see your worth painted on the creases of her lips, you can feel the warmth of her hand against your knee, and you can taste the first memory of her name on your tongue.

You don’t need her to say.

You just need  _her._

And nothing has ever hurt more.


	11. Love Lost

_A/N:_ post-34 ficlet, which somehow works  _beautifully_ (for the most part) in this world of unrelated ficlets I've been writing...

~

It’s been three days since they watched Carmilla die, and Laura hasn't slept.

Eventually, Perry and LaFontaine leave her alone.

Danny wants to stay, but Laura won’t let anyone touch her (or just  _be there_  for her), not yet (not anymore), so Danny leaves, too, taking the other survivors with her to be treated by the Summer Society sisters.

Finally, agonizingly, with her arms clutching Carmilla’s yellow pillow to her chest, Laura falls asleep.

When she reaches her REM, she finds herself in a place of infinities, and of emptiness. And it’s quiet, and still, and peaceful. And Laura feels her shoulders loosen, and her hands hang unclenched at her sides.

And nothing happens, not for a long time, impossible to measure. Until, that is, something  _does_  happen: a figure, walking towards Laura out of the darkness, all black leather and pale skin and strikingly devoid of blood stains at her chest and her throat.

(So different from how Laura remembers

~~ _She’ll never forget_ ~~

Those few seconds so bright and eternally painful

~~ _How could she possibly_ ~~

That even this gorgeous visage couldn’t erase

~~ _Forever young_ ~~

Carmilla’s macabre end.)

Laura can’t speak, can’t find her voice to pry it from whatever deep, dark hole it’s hidden itself in (probably cowering away, finding relief by caressing the shattered pieces of her broken heart, still too fragile to coax back together). She can’t even cry – and she  _would,_ she  _would_  cry because the feelings she’s feeling are  _too much_  – but she can feel dry sobs wrenching upward from deep in her chest. The tears just refuse to come. Not here (they’ve found her voice and her heart pieces and they’re all cowering, mourning together).

When she reaches Laura, Carmilla smiles. And it’s the furthest thing from a smirk – it’s kind and loving and  _everything_ , and Laura drops to her knees because they selfishly refuse to hold her up any longer (maybe they’ve forgotten how).

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Carmilla says, her voice husky and low and perfect.

“Carmilla,” Laura gasps, her voice taking pity on her for a moment. But she can’t find any more words.

Carmilla drops gracefully to her knees and reaches out a hand that nearly touches Laura’s cheek. But then she stops short.

“Dreams,” Carmilla snorts, “always keeping my most precious things just out of my grasp.”

“I’m sorry,” Laura finally manages, trembling, “this wouldn’t have happened, not if it wasn’t for me.”

“Oh,  _cupcake_ ,” Carmilla begins. But then she falls silent, and her eyes catch Laura’s – so sharp and piercing that Laura  _feels it_ , deep in her chest, somewhere beyond her fiercely beating heart. “Laura… I wouldn’t take it back. Not a second of it.”

All too soon, Carmilla is standing. “Glad we got to say goodbye, cutie.” She turns and begins to walk away, but she looks back. “Don’t keep the ginger squad at arm’s length forever. Even the tall one.” A quirked eyebrow, a pause. “ _Especially_  that one, I guess.”

And the last thing Laura sees – before she wakes and feels the stiffness of tears that have dried upon her cheeks – is Carmilla moving away, towards the horizon. And just before the darkness reaches out to embrace her, Carmilla is greeted by a girl dressed all in white, her arms open wide, welcoming her lost love home.


	12. Love Will Have Its Sacrifices (Part 1)

_ A/N: This piece will have a part two. It has been started and is definitively outlined, but I’ll be traveling tomorrow and won’t have time to write it. Enjoy this part for now! _

~

** Somewhere, Quite Nebulous and Weird **

I am not here.

I am not anywhere.

But I saw her. And that was good. Everything was good.

For a little while. Until it wasn’t. Such is life — such is  _death_.

…

I remember things.

I remember bright light, like the sun.

I remember fierce pain, like my first death, and more.

I remember the sweet embrace of light, and of darkness; of happiness, and of sadness; of life, and of death. And, somehow, sweetly, of everything — and then of nothing.

And I remember her: the shock on her face just before I turned away, heroism trailing behind me like a cape of tragic doom, and dust, and regret.

And I remember  _her:_ the way her arms reached out to catch me.

That’s…not all I remember of that reunion. Or that goodbye. But these are the things that matter the most.

But now, nothing matters. I think. The reality I find myself in is this nebulous entity lacking shape or definition, and I feel warm like I haven’t felt in centuries, and the  _hunger_  — the hunger is gone. And nothing matters.

Did it ever?

…

For a moment, I consider how exactly it is that I am able to  _feel_  — now, when I am what I believe must be  _dead_ , dead. Not only am I feeling, but I am  _questioning_  what it means to feel — and the last I knew, before I was  _dead,_ dead, was that  _dead,_  dead things didn’t think, or feel, or marvel at the universe.

…

There are stars here.

There are stars here, and they shine brighter than I had ever thought possible. But then, this place seems to defy whatever exactly it is that defines reason. _Defies_ reason, it does. I think.

...

I had a name.

I had many names.

They’re slipping away from me now.

I can’t decide whether or not that’s a bad thing.

…

Mircalla. Camrilla. Marcilla. Carmilla.

…

Ell.

….

Laura…

…

I saw my mother. Just for a moment. Not  _that_  Mother. But  _my_ mother — the one who was throwing the ball the night my throat was savagely shredded by something that dared call itself a  _man_. She was wearing a gown, and it faded to rags before my eyes as I watched, something like seconds or eternities passing like nothing, nothing,  _nothing_. And then she, too, crumbled into dust.

…

I was thinking. I was thinking about something. Thinking about thinking, maybe. But that doesn’t make sense. Or does it?

…

The abyss.

Crashing white light, and silence unlike anything I’ve ever known — but masked in a deafening roar.

How strange…

…

I would like to be saved now, I think. And from what I remember of myself, I’ve never been a damsel-in-distress type of girl.

But I  _could_  be. I could live with that distinction. If only I could  _live._

So much worth living for, once you’ve—

_Carmilla._

Wait. I was ready to be alone. Was ready to suffer and prosper and perish and exist in this place for all or none of time. But this, this tempress of memory—

_I have been waiting so long for you_.

I remember that voice, from a place hidden beneath decades spent choking on blood and wishing hellfire and death upon those who would have kept us apart.

_Come to me, Carmilla._

And I turn — in the abyss, I manage — and I see her again. She had welcomed me, here, and into her adoring arms, once. But she had also cursed me, betrayed me, and how could I—

_I meant you no harm. Come to me._

But—

_Carmilla Karnstein, spend eternity with me._

And like an atomic bomb bursting into flames before my eyes, the universe splits in half. I can’t explain the colors and the euphoria and the way every particle has come to life and _dances_  before my eyes — not if I had a million, million lifetimes. And I barely even have the one…

But I see her, a pinpoint at which the blindingly white light is converging. Ell. And her arms are outstretched, and she is smiling, and, if I could possess any kind of form in this moment, I know I would have a heart that would beat strongly, proudly,  _bravely_.

…

Carmilla Karnstein has not been brave many times in the past few centuries. It normally gets her killed.

…

And I can see it now — all I have to do is race towards her, towards Ell and the light and the eternity that lies just behind her. If I reach it, this nightmare, this dream, this un-place will end, crashing and burning behind me as if it had never existed.

Does it exist?

…Does that question matter?

…

I exist in the void, and I wonder.

...

I am not here.

I am not anywhere…

_~_

_A/N: Part 2 will take place “ **Elsewhere, Somewhere Slightly Less Nebulous, Though Just As Weird** ”_


	13. Into the Unknown

_ A/N: Post-episode 201. Absolutely non-canon. Warning: character death._

They came in the night, like shadows, wielding leaden death with the ease of children at play.

The night was black, and still, and Laura slept. But her sleep was light, as it had grown to be in recent months – months full of knowledge of dark rituals, of fear, of the unknown becoming known. These things, they keep a person up at night.

But the slightest regularity her sleep had achieved was only a recent development, since returning to Silas after their failed escape attempt. The girl on the yellow pillow beside her was a factor, of course, along with the thick, ancient walls that seemed built for shelter rather than mere habitation.

It was the slight sound of gurgling that woke the vampire – the sound of LaFontaine choking as their own blood filled their mouth, and drowned their lungs, and spilled out onto the pillow, framing their pale features in a crimson halo within seconds.

It was the creaking of a floorboard that woke the naive freshman – less and less naive by the day, and by the second, now, it would seem.

“Carm–” she began to question, sleep drenching the name like molasses, heavy and sweet.

But Carmilla cut her off, palm less gently against her lips than Laura would have normally anticipated.

Disarmed by the fear that was instantly shooting through her veins and the darkness alike, Laura gulped and kept her mouth shut of her own volition as Carmilla moved away again.

Laura thought she saw a shadow move – a shade darker than the night, flitting quickly about the room. It was Carmilla, wasn’t it? It had to be. The heavy door to the room opened, and the shadow slipped out.

But doubt filled Laura’s mind. Her eyes simply couldn’t adjust to the impenetrable darkness the heavy curtains provided, in the dead of night. And she wasn’t even sure she wanted light to see by – not yet, maybe not ever again.

She bit her tongue to keep from whispering a questioning word to the empty room, and she nearly screamed when the shadow reappeared suddenly, leaping forward, only to land nearly on top of her. Cool lips pressed against her ear, and words were whispered so softly that they nearly tickled her eardrum.

“I’m going to take your hand. Follow me. Tread lightly. Don’t look back.”

No pet names, no reassuring kisses, no eye contact that Laura could see or even feel. No pause to grab socks or slippers or a jacket. No time. No one else, only Laura and her vampire, slipping out of the antique four-poster bed and across the room.

Quickly, quietly, they headed towards the bedroom door. Laura anticipated a stealthy exit into the hallway, but Carmilla surprised her by turning sharply to the left, scooping Laura into her arms, and jumping forward into the air.

They fell for whole seconds that stretched into eternities. Laura’s stomach lurched up into her throat and her arms wrapped themselves tightly around Carmilla’s neck. When they hit the ground, Carmilla absorbed the landing with a shockwave that wracked her entire body for a shuddering second.

She sat Laura back onto her own now-wobbly feet. Laura blinked and would have doubted the action had occurred if her brain hadn’t told her otherwise. If the darkness before had been impermeable, then this darkness was that found in the depths of space – all-consuming, disorienting, vast and terrible. Panic nearly set into Laura’s consciousness – did they even still exist, or was this the end of all things? She felt for Carmilla, found the edges of her face, and knew that her lover was looking up, up, up into the void of a world from which they had descended.

“Carmilla,” Laura whispered. And her heart beat harder, faster, more profoundly in her chest as her thumbs brushed against true, wet tears on the other woman’s face. “What happened? Where are we?”

Questions she did not voice: Where are our friends? What will become of us? What evil is there, truly, in the world? Has this all been a mistake?

“They’ve come,” Carmilla finally answered, the word soft and quiet with pain and, Laura suspected, fear. “We have to keep moving.”

She moved, then, and Laura heard a soft click, as if a button had been pressed. Echoes of a gentle scraping sound reached Laura’s ears, and she knew that the way was shut behind them. At Carmilla’s gentle urging, Laura turned to follow her.

As they ran as fast as Laura’s bare feet could carry them, Laura imagined that a lot more was catching up to them then unseen trespassers in the dark, carried on wind that reeked of death’s kiss: the past, the questions, unasked and unanswered, and the mysteries that still remained between them.

When they finally reached what Carmilla deemed to be safe ground, she stopped. Laura instantly fell to her knees, centuries-old dust and debris gritty against her bare skin.

She heard Carmilla moving around, then the sound of something detaching forcefully from the wall. A snap, a small flash, and a torch was lit. Laura blinked against the sudden light, and she looked into the face of her girlfriend – that face that told her everything and nothing, depending on the moment in time.

A realization hit her, and it hit her hard and fast and hot as lightning.

“You know this place,” she gasped, pressing a hand into the stitch at her side. “You knew about that trapdoor, and you knew about these passageways.”

The answering silence caused Laura’s ears to ring.

“What happened to Perry and LaF?”

Carmilla blinked. “I had to get you out safely.”

“That’s not an answer.”

A beat, and then another. Carmilla had heard the sounds of death, had smelt it on the air – thick and heavy and intoxicating in a way that still disarmed her after all these centuries.

“They’re dead. I had to get you out,” she paused, “alive.”

Laura looked again into a face that appeared unwavering, and she mistook bravery and stoicism for apathy.

“Who are you?”

Carmilla sank gracefully to her own knees, and she reached out a hand to brush back a strand of hair from Laura’s face. Involuntarily, traitorously, Laura flinched ever so slightly out of reach.

A flash of unadulterated pain crossed Carmilla’s face.

“Carmilla,” she declared, “I’m Carmilla.” And she reached her hand out again, as if to close the distance between them would be to solve all of the world’s problems in an instant.

But this time, she was the one to waver. Carmilla’s hand fell back to her side, and Laura turned her head away, squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

“I’m such an idiot,” she breathed.

“What do you mean?” Carmilla asked, the hesitancy in her voice palpable. Her intrepid facade crumbled in the wake of Laura’s tone.

“The house, it’s yours, isn’t it?”

Then it was Carmilla who turned her head away.

“It was Mother’s.”

Laura shuddered. It made sense, too much sense. And it disgusted her.

“LaF?” she wondered aloud, “Perry? Danny? Kirsch? Is anyone safe from the curse of–” She stopped, redirected, “–this, this place?!”

And Laura knew instantly that she had hesitated a fraction of a moment too long, that she had nearly placed the blame for the curse she perceived to be all too real on Carmilla. But what had not crossed her lips had crossed her heart, leaving a shadow in its wake. And in that moment, they each knew what had remained unsaid, and what it truly meant.

Carmilla stood and extended her hand in the wavering light of the flame she had created.

“Come,” she said, “We have a long way yet to go.”

Laura turned her face to the light, and she looked up at a visage that was suddenly no longer recognizable to her – a face that was strong, cold, ancient and powerful.

She stood on her own, and they walked onward, in darkness, and in silence, surrounded by foreboding doom and flickering torchlight. The faint echoes of their respective hearts breaking between them and the light tread of their feet were their only accompaniment into the unknown.


	14. you grab the blanket, i’ll grab the bubbly (and the heartbreak)

_A/N: Another exploration into Laura finding out the truth that I feel is inevitable. Possible spoilers for post-episode 205._

It was time, finally time.

After months of uncertainty and terror and actual  _fleeing for their lives_ , Laura and Carmilla were going to have their night of stargazing.

The fancy and no doubt quite expensive champagne was sure to be an added bonus -- one that her father likely wouldn’t approve of, but one that Laura figured they deserved nonetheless.

She had scoped out the solarium earlier that afternoon, snuck up while the sun was at its apex and taken in an unprecedented view of the impressive campus. In all fairness, it was impressive for multiple reasons -- not just the towering wall of flames the Alchemy Club had conjured or the entrancing harmonies from the Glee Club, nor merely the arcing wall of arrows from the Summer Society to the east or the returning volley of trebucheted rocks and fanged library books from the Zetas. The campus was impressive because... because Laura had never seen it from this angle. And it was beautiful, in its sometimes scary and intimidating way.

Laura had thought of her girlfriend, then.

Yeah. Beauty comes in a lot of forms -- soft and hard alike.

Later that night, as she tip-toed towards the wine cellar, Laura tried to keep the hallway floorboard from creaking.  


She failed.

“Laura?”  


Her name sounded like heaven on lips that were just as divine, and Laura couldn’t even find it in herself to be  _that_  upset at having been caught.

Well,  _almost_  caught.

“Hey Carm,” she replied, “Just heading down to make a sandwich. Fancy anything? I thought we could take it up to the solarium.”  


“Mmm,” Carmilla  _purred_ , “Just grab the milk carton.”  


Laura chuckled. “Okay, grab a blanket or two and meet me upstairs?”

“Sure thing, cupcake.”  


And when Carmilla said  _cupcake_ , Laura shuddered for all the right reasons.

At the bottom of the stairs, she waited. When she heard the door to the solarium open and close, she knew she had her chance.

Laura filled an old, fancy-looking ice bucket and then carried it down into the wine cellar as quietly as she could manage. Once fairly far under ground, she began to peruse the shelves.

“Bubbly, bubbly,” she muttered to herself, brushing her fingertips against row after row of antiquated bottles and the musty smell of damp earth.

“Ahh!” she quietly exclaimed, noticing a set of shelves with bottles bearing distinct-looking corks.  


She couldn’t see the topmost shelves, but she could see enough. With a glint of light in her eyes, Laura began skimming the rows she could reach for a bottle that looked promising.

But that was when she noticed it: an empty space. There was one bottle missing, and the wooden shelf where it should have been was bare of dust, unlike so many other empty spaces around the room.

And then her keen sense of deduction kicked into overdrive, because Laura noticed that this bottle had been one of a set -- one of a set that looked grossly familiar.

The ice bucket dropped to the floor with a clatter.

In seconds, Carmilla’s silhouette was outlined against the splash of light from the doorway to the kitchen.

“Laura?” she questioned, and Laura felt bile rising in her throat.  


“Th--this...” she gestured at the row of champagne bottles, old and unimaginably expensive, and found herself incapable of saying more.  


Carmilla sighed and slowly walked down the steps. When she spoke, she didn’t sound accusatory at all -- rather, Laura imagined that she sounded a bit like the cat who had accidentally gotten herself caught in the mousetrap. 

“Why are you down here, Laura?”

Laura locked eyes with Carmilla for many long seconds, seconds in which she found her voice, however demurely it escaped her throat.

“This is the same champagne from that night.”  


“From the night I was planning on eating you?” Carmilla teased. Her tone, an attempt at playfulness, fell on deaf ears.  


“It’s the same champagne,” Laura reiterated. “Am I... am I supposed to believe this is a coincidence?”

Carmilla said nothing in return, merely dropped her gaze to the ground and bit at her own lip.

“Who does this house belong to?”  


Carmilla took so long to answer that Laura nearly stomped her foot in frustration.

But she answered. She definitely did, and her answer was the last thing Laura was prepared to hear.

“It was Mother’s, once,” she finally confirmed. “Until she gave it to me.”  


“As, what -- payment?!” Laura found herself shrieking. “Payment for delivering heaps of innocent girls to her?!”  


Carmilla balked, and Laura felt instantly ashamed -- but not enough to pretend like she hadn’t meant the words. Because she had. Because she was questioning absolutely  _everything_  in the span of just a few painful seconds.

And for all the talking she liked to do -- the talking that was  _so necessary_  in her daily life -- Laura found herself incapable of saying another word.

She ran past Carmilla, out the front door, and into the quickly encroaching darkness of night -- lit by the fire and rage that she had helped to unleash on this campus she had been attempting to call home.

And she did it alone. Terribly, miserably alone. And the pain of it was more real than she could bear.


	15. To Love a Beast

_A/N: Carmilla's POV of s2e15. Some mentions of blood/blood play._

Carmilla didn’t slam the door behind her. She had done that enough in her mid 130s -- just enough to be afraid of her mother’s wrath, even after that wrath had been extinguished. Just enough...

And what a mess -- what a mess they were in, the result of the destruction of that terrible, fiery light that Carmilla had reluctantly called home for too long.

Carmilla ran, and she ran, and she ran. And she could've been halfway to the English Channel, but instead, she found herself back in front of the apartment.

She stood beneath the heavy boughs of an ancient tree, a tree that had been enormous even when Carmilla had first set foot on Silas's campus. She had climbed its limbs many a time, had even hidden amidst its copious leaves on hot, hard nights of hellfire and brimstone -- and not always the metaphorical sort. She had sought refuge from a rage that emanated from Mother but that Carmilla had always been afraid was somehow reflective of her own nature... Madness begetting madness, and all that.

But tonight, Carmilla was running from something truly of her own making.

The taste that had at first been sweet on her tongue had turned bitter over so short a time as to be genuinely shocking, despite Carmilla's ancient sense of the world’s revolutions. The sweetness had been soured by relentless talk of heroes and of courage, by the savior-dom that was anything but self-imposed. A part of Carmilla -- deep, deep down inside of her, somewhere beneath her breastbone, swimming about on black wisps of pain and rage and nothingness -- wanted to blame Laura for that turn. But Carmilla, who for so long had shirked responsibilities (had become something of a shirking expert, in fact), knew that Laura was not to blame.

A child who burns their young, sensitive flesh on a hot stove does not get scolded. Nor does the stove. Carmilla had lit the fire, and she had known -- _goddess_ , had she known -- that Laura was a child. And it wasn’t just the girl’s age, no -- it was _everything_.

When Carmilla had said that love doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, she had said it with the conviction of a dozen lifetimes’ worth of experience. Artists and poets and dreamers and fighters and chemists and lovers had all flashed through her mind in an instant.

 _No,_ she thought again, standing alone in the darkness, _love **doesn’t** mean the same thing to everyone._

And it truly wasn’t the fact that Laura disagreed with Carmilla, it wasn’t that in the slightest -- after all, how many things had they _agreed on_ since she had moved in and started wearing Betty’s t-shirt? It was the fact that Carmilla’s very real and very personal take on love was, for Laura, _the saddest thing she had ever heard_.

Carmilla just couldn’t take it anymore -- the naivety, the pain, the disappointment on the horizon... Her love for the girl seemed to be falling short in all the wrong places.

So she had run.

It hadn’t been more than a half hour, maybe, but Carmilla’s brain had kept churning through the sequence of events like a meat grinder stuck on low -- with slow, deliberate purpose. And that relentless, clockwork clicking of cogs had brought her back here.

Carmilla looked through the window and into the first floor living area.

She knew Xena was there -- _of course_ she was. Carmilla had blown past her, sitting there on the stairs with her elbows on her knees and her nose towards the carpet, as if she wasn’t listening with the ever-rapt attention she always displayed when it came to Laura. Oh, she _tried_ to be subtle -- with her defensive posture and averted eyes, all chastised-puppy in the wake of Laura’s rejection of her last semester…

For wanting to be -- for _needing to be_ \-- some sort of savior figure in Laura’s life.

Carmilla clenched her eyes tightly shut and chuckled darkly at the twisted sense of irony coating their entire fucked up little corner of the world.

But even when she opened her eyes again, the darkness clung to the edges of her vision. She saw the arms of the Zeta wrapped around Laura’s shaking shoulders. She felt a phantom heartbeat in her chest, followed by a stillness that was all too real.

Carmilla took one last moment to look upon the distorted future she had dared to dream of. Then she turned and walked away, rough gouges marring the ancient tree’s trunk, and bits of bark dropping from her clenched fist.

~

Carmilla didn’t go far. She simply couldn’t.

For weeks, she buried herself several stories below ground, in the library’s subbasement. It was a perilous place for the living; luckily, Carmilla hadn’t qualified as such for centuries. She spent hours upon hours mindlessly refreshing Laura’s youtube page, waiting for an update.

Because that was what Laura did. She charged on, no matter what. And that thought, it made Carmilla smile the tiniest bit. Because, no -- she definitely wasn’t going to help Laura fight against the Board, against the campus itself, against her sister… But that didn’t mean she couldn’t respect the girl’s drive. It was one of the things Carmilla had originally been drawn to -- a bit of reckless enthusiasm might get someone killed, but damn if it didn’t make for an interesting memory.

And anyway, Carmilla had no intention of letting _Laura_ be the person who ended up six feet under.

~

It finally happened one afternoon approximately four and a half weeks after Carmilla had ended things. She was sitting in the library, minding her own business and studiously ignoring the winged books and shadowy figures in her periphery, when a routine refresh of the page revealed a new video.

She sat up straighter, hesitating only a moment before clicking the link and allowing her eyes to be drawn straight to Laura like they had been trained to do for months now.

And every second that followed was like a stake through the chest.

_“Was I not supposed to want her to be better?”_

Carmilla’s mouth parted ever so slightly. Had she not been honest about who she was -- about _what_ she was -- from nearly the beginning?

_“I’m not even saying that I loved her, because we were only together for, like, a month and that would be crazy.”_

Loved, loved, loved, Carmilla thought.  
Crazy, crazy, crazy.

_“Wasn’t she supposed to try and be better?”_

A drop of moisture escaped from the corner of Carmilla’s eye. She remained steadfast, unmoving, unbent.

_“The story goes: you fall in love with a monster, and then they stop being all monstery! They redeem themselves, right?! The story isn’t just… fall in love with a monster… That would be a stupid story. I don’t want to be a part of that stupid story.”_

And what is redemption anyway? Carmilla wondered. She had killed her own mother -- the mother who had tortured and manipulated her for centuries, sure, but a mother of sorts nonetheless… Did that mean anything at all?

What followed was a montage of embarrassingly epic proportions. Followed by some shots of tall, ginger Buffy being exactly the kind of hero Laura needed her to be, exactly when she needed it.

Carmilla put her fist through the computer screen.

She was suddenly seeing red, craving blood… And what better place to find it than a war-torn, supernatural campus?

Her lip curled as she emerged into the black night. Closing her eyes, Carmilla lifted her chin and sniffed the air. To the north were distant sounds of protesting and the distinct smell Carmilla had been taught to associate with _prey_ \-- weak and easy and _hers_.

The feelings that were bubbling to the surface of Carmilla’s mind were all too familiar, all too dangerous -- and she welcomed them gladly as she disappeared into the night.

~

The masses around her were pulsing. It was as if, for one glorious night, the entirety of the student body’s hearts had decided to beat in unison. The air around Carmilla positively _thrummed_ with life.

Maybe snuffing out some of it, maybe that would quench the feeling that was gripping her chest -- tighter and tighter, like some ancient, slumbering beast awakening at last from hibernation… Hungry. Feral. Unstoppable.

But of course, this _thing_ inside Carmilla couldn’t possibly be unstoppable. Because there was something immovable at work here, at Silas University, where stranger things are _always_ possible…

Carmilla craved blood -- blood that hadn’t come from an ice box or a milk carton. She could feel her salivary glands copiously producing poison, and she used her tongue to expertly apply a gloss of it to her now-protruding canines.

Suddenly, she spied her mark. The girl was beautiful, with her wavy, brunette hair and brown eyes that sparkled with rage in the light of the fire the mob had lit. It was enough to make that _thing_ inside Carmilla nearly shiver and shudder and explode in anticipation. She began to lunge, to pounce, ready to devour--

But she resisted. Only just. And maybe it had something to do with the strong grip that had suddenly appeared on her wrist, forceful yet gentle all at once.

Carmilla didn’t have to turn around to know exactly who she would see, but she did anyway -- she turned and looked into those eyes, dark as night, and at that mouth, lips blood-red and hungry… Hungry in many of the same ways Carmilla was. But especially hungry for a sisterhood that no one else could understand -- no one else, and especially not _Laura_.

They were off in a flash, running faster even than the howling wind of Silas. And as the crowd disappeared behind them, Carmilla felt a new need rise up within her -- a need no easier to control, or to satiate, or to explain to lesser mortals.

They made it to Mattie’s apartment quickly, but somehow managed to never make it to her bed.

Mattie made Carmilla bleed, and Carmilla returned the favor. And when Carmilla tasted that sweet, red essence dripping down her throat, she noted that it was not hot and gushing, as she had been hoping for just minutes ago. The blood from Mattie’s thighs possessed a warmth, however subtle, and Carmilla could have died in that moment, tasting its power, feeling it course through her body in an instant -- and she would have been some sort of happy in her last moments on earth.

With a shuddering groan and a ghost of a scream, Mattie left her name in scratch marks down Carmilla’s back, written in a language only the two of them could understand. And since they didn’t need breath, nor did they need ever to catch it, Carmilla wasted no time in climbing on top of Mattie immediately after her release, her wild eyes the only thing visible as Carmilla began to move, to grind. Her hips moved rhythmically, a dance that they had done before -- the kind you can pick up again after years, after _decades_ , apart.

In just the right instant, Mattie was flipping them over, continuing the dance the way she knew they both most enjoyed.

When Carmilla came -- with Mattie’s tongue pressed to the bleeding scratch above her breast -- her entire body shook so hard that the china in the kitchen rattled dangerously. But Carmilla herself made no sound beyond a slight mewl, a quiet whimper, and then silence.

~

Later that same night, as they laid on the living room floor with not a stitch between them, Carmilla dared to press her face to the soft, smooth skin where Mattie’s arm met her shoulder. And she cried. In return, Mattie rubbed a blood-stained palm up and down her sister’s arm, soothingly, methodically. She even sang a quiet song -- it left her lips as gently as it had from the Irish maiden who they’d heard singing it, before… Well.

After a while, when Carmilla’s silent tears showed no sign of stopping, Mattie began to make soft shushing noises -- still gently, as she always was with Carmilla, always had been, especially since rescuing the girl from that idiot Vordenberg’s ancestors…

“Shh, my dear,” she hummed, the back of her throat vibrating. “Don’t you worry about that _freshman_. She’ll be dealt with soon enough.”

Carmilla’s tears dried up quickly after that. And she said nothing in return. But she suddenly knew that she had to go back. No matter how painful it was all going to be, no matter what the consequences, however vast…

Laura may not love her back, may not even be capable of it -- because Carmilla was a monster. Yes, she was. She knew that, had _always_ known that, had even tried explaining to Laura that there was nothing she was more certain of in the world. But she also knew that monsters needed love, could love in return, and could even go so far as to temper their true nature in order to blend in with the rest…

If she wasn't enough for Laura, so be it. Carmilla's heart had been broken before. She would just have to make this time count.

With one last press of her lips to Mattie’s glistening throat, Carmilla excused herself.

And as she stepped outside and into the dawning light of a new day, Carmilla took a moment to appreciate the metaphor of it all.

~


End file.
